


blood in the water

by mnemememory



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Assassin's Creed Fusion, Bleeding Effect, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-02
Updated: 2018-11-02
Packaged: 2019-08-14 15:20:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16495196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mnemememory/pseuds/mnemememory
Summary: Five hundred years after Vox Machina, the Mighty Nein try desperately to re-trace their footsteps.(or; a conversation across time with a crazy person)





	blood in the water

**Author's Note:**

> No experience with Assassin's Creed is needed! All you really need to know is that memories are stored in DNA (just roll with it) and can be extracted by a device called the "animus". One of the side-effects of this is that - well. Prolonged exposure makes you go crazy.

...

...

**blood in the water**

...

...

Beau has a criterion for reality, now.

It’s narrowed considerably over the past few months. Beau’s got bruises down her arms from early holdovers to shocking herself back to the present; it doesn’t always work, anymore, but it’s proven the most consistent out of all her methods.

Beau holds up her arms, looks at her fingers. Keyleth exists in beautiful separation, pale and so shockingly thin. Beau only has to stare down at herself, at the cobalt blue of her clothing, at the callouses of her knuckles, and she knows who she is.

That hadn’t been an issue, not really. Not before. Beau always knows how to exist in her own head. Keyleth is a bright star just outside her peripheral – Beau knows every inch of her hard-won body. Keyleth could never be contained to mortal skin.

Now, though –

“This is getting ridiculous,” Beau says. This isn’t real, this isn’t real – she _knows_ this isn’t real, doesn’t remember getting in the animus –

“What were you expecting?” Keyleth says, sitting at the kitchen table. She’s taller than Beau would have thought – she’s gotten so used to cringing down her height, memories blurring into real life. Even looking in the mirror is a mundane affair, growing less and less strange by the hour. “You’re in our Keep, after all.”

Framed in a broken window, the once-great city of Emon lies in ruin.

It had been the first thing to go upon the return of the Whispered One, almost fifty years ago. Beau remembers hearing about it as a child hiding in the Cobalt Soul – of the nobility, and justice, and might of Emon. How it had been beloved of Vox Machina. How it had fallen, bereft of its powerful guardians.

A tower sits in the middle of the charred landscape, now – thin as an obsidian blade. It catches on the horizon and pierces the sky.

The grief that hits at the sight is phantom, unnatural. Beau has walked those streets in cheerful, drunken stupor. She has danced her way through bars with people long-dead. This is not her city.

“Are you just going to ignore me?” Keyleth says. “That’s what Deuce told you to do, isn’t it? I’m not going away.”

It is early. Too early to be awake, in any case. The rest of the Mighty Nein are either on watch or asleep, curled up beneath the stone brick and protective sigils devised by Caleb’s stressed, bloody fingers. He has been unanimously voted off watch duty by dint of being the only person capable of shielding them from The Cult’s magical, probing eyes.

Keyleth rolls her eyes and pushes herself away from the table, chair scraping loudly in the silent room. She goes over to the sink and starts picking through the cupboards, looking for something remotely edible. There isn’t much. No one has been in this building for years. Even squatters hadn’t dared to enter the threshold, warned away by the black tower. Emon might have fallen fifty years ago, but memory of tragedy is long, and the things that this city had endured – well. Beau can’t even imagine it.

“We didn’t even live here very long, in the grand scheme of things,” Keyleth says. She bends down to brush her fingers along a piece of broken pottery, half-hidden in ash. “Things happened so fast – and then there was Whitestone.”

Ah. Whitestone.

If Emon lies as a wasteland, then Whitestone never existed. Even at her most reckless and suicidal, Beau hadn’t considered going so deep into Cult territory.

“We were happy here, though,” Keyleth says. “In Greyskull.”

Beau looks up, and they’re all there, smiling at her. Vex’halia is poking her distracted brother with a piece of bacon, scowling as he continues to ignore her in favour of surreptitiously pouring red powder into Grog’s morning ale. Percy looks like he doesn’t know whether to laugh or do something about it. Grog is ignoring them all, letting a tired-looking Pike doze against his forearm while he regales Scanlan with tales of his bravery and cunning.

Beau can’t reconcile the legacy of them with this. She’s been travelling with these people for metaphorical months, and they’re not heroes, they’re _idiots_.

They killed a god.

Beau needs so, so badly to know how they did it.

“This isn’t real,” Beau whispers.

“Maybe I am, though,” Keyleth says. “You’ve seen what we can do. Is it so out of the realm of possibility that I’m here? That we’re here?”

“Pass the bacon,” Grog says, leaning over Percy to grab at Vex’halia’s plate.

“ _Excuse_ you, Grog,” Vex says, pulling it out of his reach. “Would it kill you to say ‘please’?”

Beau closes her eyes and brings her arm up to her mouth, biting down. She’s gotten good at this, chewing down hard enough to hurt but not draw blood. It worries the others when she draws blood. The first time Beau had come back to the animus with a bleeding gash along her arm, Yasha had gotten up and walked away.

_Molly used to do that,_ Nott whispered to her, late at night with Fjord standing guard over their camp. _Subject Sixteen. He had troubling telling what was real and what wasn’t, so he would cut his arm. It was…towards the end._

Beau has lasted like this for seven and a half months. Jester says that’s encouraging. Molly hadn’t even been in the animus for six months before he went crazy.

(Beau isn’t supposed to know that).

When Beau opens her eyes, Keyleth is gone.

The Keep rings hollow, air ringing with the sudden silence. There are walls, but just barely. The roof is missing, the table long-rotted to splinters. Beau inhales a deep breath, and then blows it out to shakily clear her lungs. Jester says that they’re close to the DNA sequence that will get them to the final battle, the one where Vox Machina took on the Undying King and survived long enough to grow old.

Well. For the most part.

_There is something interfering with the memories_ , Jester said. She and Not have been working overtime on the animus, but try as the might, they hadn’t been able to connect instantaneously to the memories needed. _I think it is divine energy? Something is blocking them, in any case. You need to work through it._

_If we can’t get this to work, no one can_ , Nott added.

“It’s not that easy, you know.”

Beau lets out a shout and spins around, arms automatically going up. She punches at thin air. Keyleth is standing to the side, a small grin adorning her fine features.

“That was some fast reaction time,” she says. “You know who you remind me of? Percy. He’s always so twitchy.”

“Yeah? I think he had reason to be,” Beau says, slowly letting her muscles unclench and arms fall to her sides. Keyleth looks so real, standing there. Beau wants to reach out and touch her. She doesn’t know what would be worse – feeling flesh and bone, or feeling nothing at all.

“You’re cynical like him, too,” Keyleth says. “We disagreed on a lot of things, but he was my best friend. I’m not insulting you when I say you share a likeness.”

“He was insane,” Beau says. “The Demon Tinker of Tal'dorei. Do you know how many people have died because he invented guns?”

“He was a good man,” Keyleth says.

“He was a monster.”

“You know,” Keyleth says. “We were all monsters, at least a little bit. The further along we got, the worse our decisions were. Don’t you see them? We’ve left behind so many bodies…”

Beau shakes her head. This isn’t real. This isn’t real.

The problem is, she’s had dinner with Percival Fredrickstein Von Musel Klossowski de Rolo III, shared peaceful silence with him, seen his face when he realised his sister was alive. She’s felt the hot, awkward shame that bubbles in the Voice of the Tempest when she can’t find the right words to say. They are inexplicably, hauntingly human – in best and worst sense of the word.

“I suppose this is our legacy,” Keyleth says, turning to stare at Emon.

“You’re dead,” Beau says. “You’re dead, you’re not real, _get out of my head –!”_

“Beau?”

Beau barely has time to curse as her vision swims out of focus. The only thing that remains is Keyleth standing there, expression lost as she stares at the scorched ruins of a civilisation.

Then even that is gone.

…

…

“What is Yasha like in bed?”

“I’m not answering that, Jester.”

 “Ah-ha! That was going to be my next question. What’s my name?”

“You can’t be serious.”

“Okay, okay – what is _Nott’s_ name?”

“Fjord.”

“Wrong!”

“No, I mean – _Fjord_ , get her away from me.”

“Now, now, let’s not be hasty. I think we should let out healer take a good look at you before we do anything else.”

“Final question! Bonus round – what’s _your_ name?”

Keyleth – hesitates.

There is a wrong answer to this, she knows. There is a very wrong answer, and a very right one. The faces and names are familiar, but taste awkward in the back of her mouth. Keyleth has never been good with words, not eve, but especially now –

Vax hides in the corner of her vision, smile twisted sly. His eyes are warm. He gives her a small nod, and then is gone in the space between this blink and the next.

“Beau,” she struggles out from a claustrophobic throat. “Beauregard.”

“Welcome back!” Jester gives three short claps and whirls away so that the relief doesn’t show. Beau can read it in tense slope of her shoulders, in the artificial brightness of her smile. She’s too grateful for the reprieve to say anything.

Deuce comes to her next, running through a more comprehensive – if slightly more professional – of Jester’s game of twenty questions. What is the date? Where does she think they are? What was the last thing she ate? It’s the trickier version of the two. She isn’t allowed to sit up until she’s answered at least seventy-five percent correct.

It would be easier, maybe, if they weren’t camping out in the rubble remains of Greyskull Keep. Beau can see ghosts without trying – she’s lost track of how many times she turns a corner to find it gone. And it isn’t just her; the rest of the Mighty Nein have settled into an uneasy truce with their surroundings, if barely. Yasha refuses to come down into Percy’s old workshop, where they’ve set up the animus.

“How long has this been going on?” Deuce says, shining something bright into her eye.

“Ow! Ow, what the fuck –” Beau says, trying to wriggle away.

Keyleth watches over her shoulder, amused. “Let them fuss. They’re worried about us.”

“About me,” Beau says, automatically, and then wishes she hadn’t.

“What was that, Beau?” Jester says from where she’s pretending to fiddle with the animus. She looks worried. Beau _hates_ worrying Jester. “Is everything okay?”

“Everything is fine,” Deuce soothes, grip tightening on Beau’s shoulder. “You just get back to sorting through the data. Beau isn’t going back under for another day or so.”

“ _What_?” Beau says. “You can’t be – we don’t have time for that!”

“You should listen to him,” Keyleth says.

“And _you_ ,” Beau says, twisting to glare at her. “You can just shut up! You’re not being _any_ help here –”

“Beau,” Jester whispers.

There are too many walls. Everything feels hot, and dark, and heavy. Beau – Keyleth – Beau shakes her head and tries to keep breathing, just keep breathing.

“Two days,” Deuce says, slow and easy. “You’re not going back under for two days.”

Beau closes her eyes. Keyleth is still there, smiling. “Okay.”

…

…

Yasha is sitting in the remains of the Temple of Serenrae.

She’s leaning up against one of the half-destroyed walls, eyes half-closed, sword hugged tight to her chest. From far away, she doesn’t even look like she’s breathing.

It’s almost peaceful. From where Beau is entering, she can’t see Emon – Yasha is bracketed by dim sunlight and mountaintops that stretch out for eons. The ceiling has partially collapsed to one side, shards of coloured, crushed glass littering the ground. Beau can remember scores of people lying here, wounded and dying and already dead. Pike rushing between them, draining herself dry –

Beau goes and sits next to Yasha.

Yasha doesn’t do anything, doesn’t make any sign that she’s aware of Beau’s presence. Her eyes are closed, breathing faint and shallow. The trip on her sword seems to tighten, but that might just be a trick of the light.

“You can’t keep avoiding this conversation,” Beau says.

Yasha doesn’t say anything.

“Yasha,” Beau says, reaching out to touch her arm. “Look, I know that I’m – I’m shitty at this kind of thing, but –”

“Don’t,” Yasha says.

Beau breaks off with a scowl, fingers curled into loose fists. She’s losing muscle mass, from all the time she’s spent in that damn chair. The longer this goes on for, the less effective she’ll be as a fighter.

Maybe it won’t matter. Maybe they’ll find something in Keyleth’s memories that will tell them how to defeat the Lord of the Rotted Tower. Caleb certainly seems to think that’s the case. Their resident history nerd, insistent that Vox Machina had done…something, to keep The Whispered One at bay for so long.

Well, whatever it was, it hadn’t stuck.

The first thing Caleb had ever said to her was, _There are not many people with the Voice of the Tempest running through their blood_. Beau hadn’t really understood, at the time, just what she was agreeing to.

It’s a bit too late to back out now.

“I don’t know how to make this right,” Beau says, when the silence stretches too thin to bare.

“You can’t,” Yasha says. “This isn’t – this isn’t – you can’t.”

“I want to,” Beau says. She grabs onto Yasha’s hand and pries it away from her sword. “I want to.”

Yasha’s smile is a ghost of a thing. “You can’t,” she repeats, lacing their fingers together. Beau tugs, and she’s got Yasha’s broad arm around her shoulders.

This is what Beau needs to protect. The silence between storms; sunlight on Yasha’s marble face; Pike staring sadly up at her from beside the corpse of a child –

Beau presses her face into Yasha’s shoulder and shakes.

…

…

“Are you ready?” Jester says.

“I’m fine,” Beau says.

“That’s not what she asked,” Nott says, but quietly. She’s over in the corner drinking from her flask and re-reading some of Caleb’s notes. Beau doesn’t look at her.

It’s just them in the room. Fjord is on watch with Deuce. Caleb is meditating – well, probably meditating – in the cellar, scrawling and re-scrawling their wards to keep them hidden right under the enemy’s nose.

Yasha is. Somewhere.

“Let’s do this,” Beau says, leaning back. She closes her eyes, and –

…

…

Keyleth wakes up with a loud gasp.

“What’s the matter?” Vax says, pressing his nose sleepily into the side of her neck. His arms are strong and sure around her. “Kiki?”

“Nothing,” Keyleth says. Her heart won’t stop racing. “It’s nothing.”

…

…

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't played Assassin's Creed in years - I had to look up a bunch of stuff, which is probably wrong to what I remember it being. Ah, well. 
> 
> Sorry for the long wait RIP. I'm finished for this semester, though! So hopefully I'll be back on track. Just in time for NaNo to kill me.


End file.
